Health, Illness, and Getting a Grip

Being healthy isn’t a mark of holiness. Neither is being sick. What counts is how we deal with what we’ve got. There’s a great deal more to say about that, but not today. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 828, 1509, 2211, 2288–2291, 2292–2296, 2448)

We’re reasonably sure that folks have been getting polio for millennia. Polio epidemics weren’t a problem until 1907.

I think that was a good idea. But let’s say that I don’t, and have ‘old fashioned values.’ (October 16, 2016)

Applying an earlier century’s all-to-common spin on Christianity, I could claim that food poisoning “is a visitation from God.”

The early, and mid, 20th century had it’s oddball notions too. We’ve got a slightly different set today. They make just as much — or little — sense.

The last time a case of polio started in my country was in 1979.

Polio hasn’t been eradicated yet, so someone could catch the disease before entering the United States. That hasn’t happened since 1993,1 but I think routine vaccinations are still a good idea.

Polio isn’t the only serious disease, of course. But apparently some folks remember that it’s something to avoid. That makes sense. Panic? Not so much.

Researching this post, I learned about what one outfit called the “The Great U.S. Polio Panic of 2015.”

The disease acted like polio, but wasn’t. Several enterovirus D68 cases had been diagnosed, mostly in the Midwest, in 2014. I missed that “panic,” so it may have been limited to folks with specific reading preferences.

Polio in History

When I finally started walking, it was with a limp. I’ve talked about hip dysplasia, doctors, and why I take medical ethics a bit personally, before. (October 7, 2016)

This was the 1950s, so at least one person figured I’d survived a polio infection. It was a reasonable guess at the time.

Folks my age are among the last Americans whose parents might have reasonably feared another polio epidemic.

Polio epidemics started in the 20th century.2 The disease is much older.

Now that we know what to look for, scientists and historians have traced polio back several millennia.

I’ll grant that a retrospective diagnosis on someone who died three millennia back can be debatable. And often is. Debated, that is.

But we do have pictures. I think it’s likely that the priest pictured on that stele had polio, and survived.

We also have Siptah’s mummy, and some records from his time. He’s a pharaoh you may or may not have heard of, who lived during the Nineteenth Dynasty.

Something left him with a severely deformed left foot. A little over 32 centuries later, we’re reasonably sure that he had polio: or something that acted like polio.

The first clinical description of poliomyelitis, polio, was published in 1789. That’s when Michael Underwood described “a debility of the lower extremities.”

The disease had quite a few names in my language during the early 19th century: Dental Paralysis, Infantile Spinal Paralysis, Essential Paralysis of Children, Regressive Paralysis, Myelitis of the Anterior Horns, Tephromyelitis, and Paralysis of the Morning.

Jakob Heine wrote a medical report on Lähmungszustände der unteren Extremitäten in 1840. It’s pretty clear that the “paralysis of the lower extremities” he described was polio.

The disease wasn’t common. Outbreaks were scattered and small. We didn’t have polio epidemics before the 20th century. (August 21, 2016)

Iron Lungs: Not Missing the ‘Good Old Days’

Some folks recovered with no serious aftereffects. Some were crippled.

Some died because paralysis hit systems we use to breathe. By the 1950s, we’d figured out how to keep folks who couldn’t breathe on their own alive with tech like iron lungs.

It was an improvement on the ‘good old days,’ but not by much.

In 1952 the first practical polio vaccine was developed in a lab.

We’d learned, the hard way, that careful testing makes sense. I’ll get back to that.

Nobody died this time around, and the vaccine worked. Mass inoculations started in 1955. An average of about 20,000 folks were catching polio each year by then.

I went through an immunization sequence, and didn’t mind at all when an oral vaccine replaced injections.

However, if half of what I’ve read about the program is accurate, it could be a case study in how not to conduct a public immunization program.

The 1904 Rio de Jainero ‘Vaccine Revolt’ was the high, or low, point.

Depending on who you believed, folks like the chap wielding a scalpel in that cartoon were to blame; or the broom-and-hatchet brigade.

My guess is that official attitudes hadn’t changed much since 1891, when the Inspector of Public Health reported that Rio promoted a “complete absence of moral virtue” among its inhabitants, who practiced “horrendous nudity and licentious behavior.”

A much more recent, and academic, publication’s author says that the problem was clashing cultural norms.

Government doctors didn’t see a problem with going into someone’s home and getting up close and personal with the missus and daughters. The folks with a “complete absence of moral virtue” didn’t have the same ‘doctor knows best’ attitude, and did see a problem.3

I’m not unsympathetic, but think working to convince doctors that washing their hands was a good idea would have been a better idea. (October 30, 2016)

The Anti-Vaccination Society of America got started after a visit by William Tebb. He was for social reform, against vaccination, concerned about premature burial, and paid for a drinking fountain in Burstow, England.

The fountain was dedicated to memory of the 400,000 horses killed and wounded during the Boer War. Tebb was also gung-ho about physical purity, food reform, and teetotalism. A colorful chap, in a colorful century. (April 9, 2017; November 11, 2016; July 10, 2016)

“Lifesaving vaccines in the island nation of Vanuatu will soon be delivered to remote areas by drone.

“A partnership between the government and the United Nations children’s fund (Unicef) will see a trial on drone medical delivery next year.

“The country is made up of a string of more than 80 islands – once known as the New Hebrides – many of which do not have airstrips or good roads.

“Most of the people live in rural areas and farm their own food.

“Vanuatu’s director general at the ministry of health said the test was a milestone for the small island nation….”

Getting vaccines to folks who need them makes sense. So does letting recipients know what the vaccines are for, and how to use them. Better yet, having someone with a little training on site to answer questions and at least supervise inoculations.

These ‘drones’ are unmanned aerial vehicles, aircraft that fly without anyone aboard. Some are updated versions of model airships used in 19th century music hall acts and radio-controlled model airplanes flying at least since my younger days.

The last I heard, fully-autonomous drones are still in the research and development stage.

‘Good Enough for a Story’

Given the human capacity for silliness, I’m pretty sure that someone’s going to have unreasonable fears of what UNICEF is ‘really’ up to.

The fears would make sense, in a ‘good enough for a story’ way.

UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, is part of the United Nations Development Group. For some, the UN connection alone would be enough for heebie-jeebies.

2. Measles: Avoidable Deaths

“Thirty-five people have died in the past year from measles outbreaks across Europe, the World Health Organization has warned.

“It described the deaths – which can be prevented with vaccination – as an ‘unacceptable tragedy’.

“A six-year-old boy in Italy was the latest to die from the infection. More than 3,300 measles cases have been recorded in the country.

“The most fatalities – 31 – have been in Romania.

“But there have also been deaths in Germany and Portugal since June 2016….”

Measles isn’t as scary as the Black Death. It’s also a fairly new disease. Scientists figure it evolved from the rinderpest virus, about a thousand years back.5

Rinderpest was an often-fatal disease for cattle, so dealing with that virus was a priority. It’s now one of two diseases we’ve managed to eradicate.

Most folks who catch measles recover, if they can rest and don’t develop any of several occasionally-fatal complications. But since a few folks will die after getting measles, we’ve developed MMR vaccine.

The notion that MMR vaccine causes people like me6 comes partly from a fake 1998 article in The Lancet.

Result? A remarkable number of folks are scared of keeping their kids healthy. Not that they’d put it that way.

Bogus “scientific” research ranges from honest but stupid mistakes, through professional fraud, to crackpots and ethically-challenged journalists. Whatever the cause, it’s a bad idea. (April 28, 2017; December 16, 2016; August 26, 2016)

What’s sad is that the MMR vaccine works, and should be available anywhere in Europe. Those folks didn’t have to die.

The New York University researcher had tried a dead-virus vaccine on himself and several thousand children.

They didn’t die, but many developed severe allergic reactions to the vaccine. They didn’t have immunity to polio, either.

Dr. Brodie’s career was essentially over. He died a few years later, in his late 30s. I don’t know why, although rumors of suicide are plausible.7

Dr. John Kolmer tested a weakened-virus vaccine on several thousand children, the same year as Brodie’s experiment. They didn’t acquire immunity. Several caught polio. Nine of them died.8

Happily, other researchers kept working. I talked about that earlier.

Medical research is a good idea, if it doesn’t expose folks “to disproportionate or avoidable risks.” (Catechism, 2292–2295)

We’ve learned a great deal since 1935. My guess, and hope, is that Dr. Brodie thought his vaccine was safe for human testing. Using himself as a test subject certainly suggests that. The results were still tragic.

Disease: One of Many Problems

Folks in that photo, taken on the Congo River in 2008, were refugees. They were living on abandoned barges. The barges had once hauled agricultural and industrial products.

Polio outbreaks are just one of the problems folks in the DRC face.

Folks have lived there for — a very long time: 90,000 years, at least. My guess is that it’s a whole lot longer. ‘It happened earlier’ seems like a common theme in our growing knowledge of Earth’s past, and ours. (June 16, 2017)

Folks living in the Congo basin should be prospering. Their land has abundant mineral resources, good farmland, a nice climate, and the Congo River. The Congo is one of Earth’s major rivers.

I think, and hope, the Congo will eventually be as filled with commerce as my continent’s Mississippi.

That is in a hoped-for future.

Today, the territory is a mess.

The 2016 Human Development Index ranked the DRC’s level of human development at 176 out of 187.9 There are worse places to live, but not many.

Appalling ‘Philanthropy’

“Congo” was arguably easier for Europeans to pronounce than the regional name, Nzadi O Nzere, River Swallowing Rivers.

“Mississippi” is what happened when Frenchmen tried saying Mshi-ziibi, “Big River.” And that’s another topic.

I won’t blame all of the Congo basin’s problems on Belgium. But Leopold II’s rapacious rule was a bad idea, and conditions haven’t been much better since.

From roughly 1390 to 1891, Kingdom of Kongo was a semi-independent nation, a sort of junior partner of Belgium.

Non-European slavers like Tippu Tip didn’t make life easier for folks living there. Neither did Portuguese merchants who were major clients of the slavers.

On top of that, the kingdom’s internal politics seem to have been rather intense.

In 1885 Belgium’s King King Leopold II told other European leaders that he’d be doing humanitarian and philanthropic work in Kingdom of Kongo. They apparently believed him, so until 1908, Leopold’s “Congo Free State” was the king’s personal property.

His notion of ‘uplifting’ folks living there was to relieve them of all the ivory, rubber, and minerals he could ship out. Even by the period’s standards, his conduct was appalling.

International pressure convinced Belgian’s government to rename Leopold’s Congo Free State as the Belgian Congo.

That lasted from 1908 to 1960. It wasn’t quite more of the same.

The territory has been independent since then, endured a succession of dubiously-ethical leaders, and has been renamed a few times. It is currently not the worst place on Earth to live. By a narrow margin.

Why Pay Attention?

Africa is a long way from Minnesota.

Why should I pay attention to what’s happening there?

I’m interested in the science involved in sorting out the polio outbreak.

I think the World Health Organization’s polio eradication efforts are a good idea. We’ve got a pretty good chance of succeeding, too.

Not “soon” by American standards, maybe. But we’re down to a few dozen known cases a year. My guess is that we’re no more than a few decades from putting polio on the “eradicated” list, along with smallpox and rinderpest. Or could be, if we keep working.

Finishing the Job

I don’t have a problem with polio vaccine, partly because I’ve long since gone through the process. So have many other folks.

I also looked into how a vaccine-derived poliovirus happens.

Vaccines with weakened live viruses are safe and effective. That’s true only if enough folks in an area get immunized. Having creature comforts like water and sewage treatment tech helps.

Folks living in many, most, parts of the DRC don’t. Many didn’t get immunized.

Inadequate sewage treatment isn’t a problem by itself. Not where poliovirus is concerned. It’s still a good idea, for other reasons.

Where was I? polio, vaccines, sewage treatment. Right.

If everyone in an area is immunized, it won’t matter that kids get exposed to the attenuated poliovirus. The viruses will die if they don’t promptly reinfect another person. End of problem.

Even if an unimmunized kid gets infected with the weakened vaccine virus, the results are the same as if he or she took the vaccine normally.

The weakened virus will trigger an immune response, the kid acquires immunity, and the viruses die. When everyone’s immune, all viruses are dead. End of problem again.

However — viruses, including the one that causes polio, mutate and evolve rapidly.

With enough unimmunized folks around, a vaccine-derived virus strain will keep moving from host to host. There’s a chance that it’ll change into a fully active virus. Then we have a polio outbreak. Big problem.

Getting polio vaccines to folks is a good idea. So is making sure that enough folks get immunized. This is a job that, once started, should be finished.

In Pasteur’s case, I think some assumptions about his beliefs may come from his refusal to mix religion and science. Mendel didn’t either; but like I said, he was an Augustinian friar and abbot.

My culture’s recent history might make imagining someone rejecting either faith or science easy enough. Attempting a ‘scientific’ faith or ‘Biblical’ science is another option. But not, I think, a good option.

Trusting God, Within Reason

My experience suggests that thumpers started losing their penchant for ersatz Elizabethan English around the time ‘creation science’ hatched.

Their ‘faith-based science’ details were new, but the basic ideas remind me of Hawkins’ imaginative effort to wrap new facts around his preferred reality:

“…Such is the Basis of Scripture, and such also is the legitimate deduction of History. But incontinent Liberality deceiving Faith, Reason, empty with the fumes of that same flattery by which we originally fell, cometh of the unhallowed embrace, and finding in the crust of the Earth certain animal Types….”
(“The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons, Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri,” Thomas Hawkins, Thomas; p. 1 (1840))

Embarrassing as ‘creation science’ is, I don’t see it as a physically dangerous belief. Faith healing’s far end is another matter. It’s been quite a while since I’ve heard of someone dying because their religion was against medical treatment, so maybe it’s on the wane.

Getting and staying healthy is a good idea. Within reason. So is prayer. And science. (Catechism, 1506–1510, 2288, 2289, 2292)

The idea that God has anger management issues, and smites folks with disease? I suspect that was more common in the 18th century than now.

“for a man to infect a family in the morning with smallpox and to pray to God in the evening against the disease is blasphemy; that the smallpox is a judgment of God on the sins of people, and that to avert it is but to provoke him more; that inoculation is an encroachment on the prerogatives of Jehovah, whose right it is to wound and smite.”
(Contemporary reaction to inoculation experiments by American physician Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, circa 1720)

“Smallpox is a visitation from God; but the cowpox is produced by presumptuous man; the former was what Heaven ordained, the latter is, perhaps, a daring violation our of holy religion.”
(A physician’s reaction to Dr. Edward Jenner’s experiments in developing a vaccine for smallpox, (1796) via Psychological Sciences, Vanderbilt University)

Repeating what I’ve said before, and probably will again, I take my faith seriously.

Reading the Bible, frequently, is important. So is trusting God, and God’s truth. (Catechism, 101–133, 215–217)

Living in Yesterday’s Tomorrow

The RCA Whirlpool “Miracle Kitchen” went on tour, starting in about 1956. It included a microwave oven: one of the more accurate ‘world of the future’ predictions.

Quite a few folks were talking about ‘miracles’ then, the futuristic kind.

“…’Miracles You’ll See in the Next Fifty Years’ pretty much summed up the attitude of the day. We weren’t just going to see advances or novelties; we were going to see miracles….”
(“Life in 2000 AD,” Tales of Future Past, David S. Zondy)

I can get nostalgic about the era’s silly ‘world of tomorrow’ enthusiasm.

I don’t think it made any more sense than today’s equally-silly pessimism. But imagining a future “where jetpacks were as common as galoshes,” as David S. Zondy put it, was fun.

Now that I’m living in ‘the future,’ it’s not as shiny as some folks expected. I like it, on the whole, and that’s yet another topic. (June 23, 2017; October 30, 2016)

The “Miracles You’ll See…” article in a 1950 Popular Mechanics magazine was, I think, overly-optimistic.

But folks who were my current age at the time, born in 1885, had reason to be enthusiastic about the next half-century. Particularly if they were like me, and remembered what living in ‘simpler times’ was really like.

Cholera and Miasma

The first cholera pandemic ran from 1817 to 1824. We don’t know how many died.

The second cholera pandemic, from 1829 to 1849, was probably just as bad.

Cholera went international again in 1852. That pandemic ran until 1860. The fourth cholera pandemic lasted from 1863 to 1875.

Details of the fifth cholera pandemic are debatable. Debated, anyway. What’s more certain is that it lasted from 1881 to 1896, and killed a lot of folks. Again, we don’t know exactly how many.

The sixth and seventh cholera pandemics, 1899-1923 and 1961-75, were more of the same. We haven’t had another one since. Outbreaks and epidemics, yes. Pandemic, no. That’s progress. Stopping cholera is also part of a job we haven’t finished yet.

I’m not surprised that we don’t have exact numbers for how many folks died in those global disasters. Survivors of an epidemic or pandemic understandably focus more on burying bodies and rebuilding their society, less on compiling records.

Another priority would be healing folks who are still sick. Or, better yet, keeping folks from getting sick in the first place.

Folks from Europe to China had noticed that disease was more likely near fetid swamps and other smelly places. Common-sense prevention, like not touching sick people, wouldn’t keep you healthy.

The most obvious common factor was contact with foul-smelling air.

Vitruvius, a 1st century Roman architect, noticed a connection between the “heavy, unhealthy vapors” of the Pontine Marshes and illness. (“De architectura,” Book I)

Miasma theory was the consensus scientific explanation for disease until about 130 years back. Other theories. like contingent contagionism, had been suggested. The contagionism-miasma debate was big among doctors in the 19th century.

The idea that disease was spread by tiny “seeds” was over two thousand years old, but ‘bad air’ seemed a more reasonable explanation. That, we could smell. And correlations between ‘night air’ and disease were well-documented. Causation seemed plausible.

Certainly more plausible than the idea that tiny little critters we can’t see are bad for us. That idea took a long time to catch on.

‘Magic Bullets’

Agostino Bassi found a tiny fungus that made silkworms sick. In 1844, he said that maybe tiny organisms caused diseases in humans, too.

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About Brian H. Gill

I'm a sixty-something married guy with six kids, four surviving, in a small central Minnesota town. I mostly write and make digital art. I'm only interested in three things: that which exists within the universe; that which exists beyond; and that which might exist.

Thanks, and fixed. About the image display: it’s an intermittent issue with some images in that one directory. I’ve run into it before, but not often.

Since you reminded me – and let me know that it’s not just my connection – I have either resolved the issue by moving the images to another directory, and updating links – – – or really messed up the system. Since they seem to display correctly, it’s probably fixed. I hope. 🙂 Thanks again.

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